Masters Of Horror Episode 6 - Homecoming.

Karl Hungus

Hmm... Seems we skipped the reviews of Episode 5? No matter.

So far, Masters Of Horror has been extremely hit and miss in my view. Don Coscarelli's Incident On And Off A Mountain Road, Stuart Gordon's Dreams In The Witch House, and Tobe Hooper's Dance Of The Dead have all been episodes I really enjoyed, so to say it started well in my eyes would be accurate. Both Dario Argento's Jenifer and Mick Garris' Chocolate have been quite terrible though, and this brings us nicely to Joe Dante's Homecoming.

Being the only zombie piece of the series, I was looking forward to this episode quite a bit, but to tell the truth, I was very let down. You know, some people take issue with George Romero's less that subtle social and political commentary (Especially with Land Of The Dead), but I've consistantly enjoyed all his Dead films so far, and quite liked his special brand of commentary on today's world. But Homecoming takes this idea a step too far... Hell, even a whole 100 paces too far.

The idea is that the bodies of recently dead US Marines that were sent home have started rising, and they want to vote out the administration that sent them to die! I kid you not, that is what the episode is about. As a political commentary, it's politics are so forced, so utterly ham-fisted that it feels like the agenda of this episode is being rammed down my throat as hard as inhumanly possible, and even though it's an issue I would agree with, the episode doesn't so much 'Comment' as hit you upside the head and shout "Agree with me!" And I just find that kind of thing to my taste. As a bit of zombie action, there's some enjoyable scenes, but the whole thing feels like a few odd bits of zombie poured into a mix that's 95% Propaganda and Agenda. As a bit of satire, well, it's still as ham-fisted as it gets, and it certainly has no bones about aiming for people like Anne Coulter, quite blatantly so.

Overall, there was some decent acting, and some fairly good zombie scenes, but that's the best thing I can say about the episode, because the rest of it is nothing more than a political agenda being forcefed to the viewers.

Something else that kinda irks me is the fact that it seems that there must be a clause in the director's contract that at least one sex scene must be included in a episode. Not that sex in horror bothers me, but it's almost begining to feel less like Masters Of Horror and more like Masters Of Softcore Porn. So far we've had sex, rape and now S&M in every episode, and it's starting to look like a set formulae.

Tusky

Havent seen this one yet but I, too, have been quite let down with the series thus far.

spooky donkey

Rember its only TV lads. We have been spoiled with good and Bad horror Movies that had anything from 3 months to a year to shoot. TV rearly comes up to the par of cinema. I havent seen 5 or 6 yet but i`ll play catch up soon.

spooky donkey

OK i finally got around to watching this last night and yeah its cheasy, espicially the american flag but at the end made me cringe. It was an origonal idea to be fair but talking zombies? man I hope things improve here.